holbrook was protected by his loyal friend, secretary of state hillary clinton. so what happened was for more than a year, both sides just fought very bitterly, very acrimoniously, holbrook would be excluded from meetings, denied the use of government aircraft. holbrook would convene gatherings that didn't have all personnel in them. it was childish. our government is supposed to be better than this. but this in-fighting that i detail came at a real cost. we had a window when we were surging troops in there, when we had real leverage. i'm not trying to say the taliban were waiting there on the other side of the table, you know, ready to negotiate. it was always going to be a tough path to get there. but we could have tried to at least had a unified policy and moved forward with trying to find an honorable way to end this conflict with fewer lives lost. instead, senior officials of our government who should have been working together on the same team at times were more consumed with fighting one another than fighting against the common enemy. >> the tragedy of afg